From The Berg To The Camp Was From 800 To 1000 Yards,
And A Sleet Of Bullets Whistled Down Upon It.
How severe was the
fire may be gauged from the fact that the little pet monkey
belonging to the
Yeomanry - a small enough object - was hit three
times, though he lived to survive as a battle-scarred veteran.
Those wounded in the early action found themselves in a terrible
position, laid out in the open under a withering fire, 'like
helpless Aunt Sallies,' as one of them described it. 'We must get a
red flag up, or we shall be blown off the face of the earth,' says
the same correspondent, a corporal of the Ceylon Mounted Infantry.
'We had a pillow-case, but no red paint. Then we saw what would do
instead, so they made the upright with my blood, and the horizontal
with Paul's.' It is pleasant to add that this grim flag was
respected by the Boers. Bullocks and mules fell in heaps, and it
was evident that the question was not whether the battle could be
restored, but whether the guns could be saved. Leaving a fringe of
yeomen, mounted infantry, and Kitchener's Horse to stave off the
Boers, who were already descending by the same steep kloof up which
the yeomen had climbed, the General bent all his efforts to getting
the big naval gun out of danger. Only six oxen were left out of a
team of forty, and so desperate did the situation appear that twice
dynamite was placed beneath the gun to destroy it.
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